Progressives Are Urged To Oppose Kagan Supreme Court Nomination

Interesting article in The Smirking Chimp, by Norman Solomon, urges progressives to oppose President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court arguing that, if confimed, Kagan, “will move the Supreme Court to the right.”

Solomon quotes University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle: “During the course of her Senate confirmation hearings as Solicitor General, Kagan explicitly endorsed the Bush administration’s bogus category of ‘enemy combatant,’ whose implementation has been a war crime in its own right. Now, in her current job as U.S. Solicitor General, Kagan is quarterbacking the continuation of the Bush administration’s illegal and unconstitutional positions in U.S. federal court litigation around the country, including in the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Excerpts:

• The White House is in the grip of conventional centrist wisdom. Grim results stretch from Afghanistan to the Gulf of Mexico to communities across the USA.
• The president (by nominating Kagan) has taken a step that jeopardizes civil liberties and other basic constitutional principles. … Unless the Senate refuses to approve Kagan for the Supreme Court, the nation’s top court is very likely to become more hostile to civil liberties and less inclined to put limits on presidential power.
• Here is yet another clear indication that progressives must mobilize to challenge the White House on matters of principle. Otherwise, history will judge us harshly — and it should.
• For more than 15 months, evidence has mounted that President Obama routinely combines progressive rhetoric with contrary actions. As one bad decision after another has emanated from the Oval Office, some progressives have favored denial — even though, if the name “Bush” or “McCain” had been attached to the same presidential policies, the same progressives would have been screaming bloody murder.
• But enabling bad policies, with silent acquiescence or anemic dissent, encourages more of them. At this point, progressive groups and individuals who pretend that Obama’s policies merely need a few tweaks, or just suffer from a few anomalous deficiencies, are whistling past a political graveyard.
• The corporate-military centrism of the Obama administration has demoralized and demobilized the Democratic Party’s largely progressive base …. For progressives, giving the Obama administration one benefit of the doubt after another has not prevented matters from getting worse. …. Progressives should fight the Kagan nomination.

Written by Mike Bock